Affiliate Marketing is not for everyone but if you decide to use Affiliate Marketing to earn a Work From Home income, I’d like to share a bit of advice:
Use Twitter!
Not exclusively, of course. But, add Twitter into your Marketing Toolbox. In my personal experience, I have found that Twitter can be a massive game changer if harnessed correctly.
So, here are a few Tips for Promoting Affiliate Products on Twitter – Beginner
Relevance!
This is really key with any advertising campaign and everything has to go together. From your text, to your image, to what your audience is searching for. Be relevant.
The most common mistake I found among those trying to use Twitter for Affiliate Marketing was the lack of consistent relevance. What I mean is new marketers will just start mentioning a new product without ever talking about a relevant topic beforehand.
If your Twitter was mainly used for personal use or to market something totally different, you’ll need to start a new Twitter account.
This way, your followers know what they are following. Or, you can completely re-brand your Twitter Account. Be sure to announce the re-branding several times throughout a week time period.
Do not try to “sell” anything while re-branding. That just looks desperate. If people want more info, they’ll ask.
By re-branding, you’re allowing those that do not want this information to unfollow you. Then, you can begin rebuilding your audience with followers that are interested in your product(s).
Get Personal With It!
Another obvious flaw in many of the tweets that I see on a regular basis is that they were identical to everyone else’s. Literally, a copy and paste!
Those who personalize their messages WILL convert better than those who do not.
A personal recommendation is going to get a much better response in terms of actual conversions and it is far less likely to hurt your relationship with your followers as the tweet will be in your voice and hopefully out of your experience with the product.
Be Genuine!
Do not promote something you do not believe in!
My policy with affiliate marketing is to only recommend products that I have used or have had someone close to me who I trust use and recommend.
This is again something that will add weight to your recommendation and increase conversion – but it’ll also help your reputation and stop you from promoting products that are crap.
In the make money from home niche, people try to promote any and every program out there even if it doesn’t work simply because they can make money by giving you their affiliate link.
Everyone wants to make money and if YOU “recommend” something to them, they will trust you and purchase what you tell them “works”.
In the world of affiliate marketing, you can make money from almost any product out there, so why not promote something that actually works, right?
Recommend a product that doesn’t work and your own reputation and any trust you’ve built up with those who follow your advice will suffer. Don’t sacrifice your own brand for the sake of a few quick dollars.
Conversation! Talk with your followers. Not at them!
The title says it all.
If you and a fellow follower are discussing a topic that you happen to have an affiliate link for, then go ahead and give it to them. But they just followed you and you message them a script and a link… Nothing will come of the “cold call” tweet.
Only leave links that are relevant to the conversations you’re having. Make sure they naturally fit into the conversations and be sure to let them know that it is an affiliate link.
Don’t try to sprinkle your affiliate link all over the place. Imagine having a conversation with someone on Twitter and you see nothing but blue words? Kinda obvious.
Link to Affiliate Products Indirectly
If I could recommend one tip over all the other tips in this article, it would be this one. I think it’s much more effective and less intrusive within the Twitter culture to tweet a link to one of your blog posts that include an affiliate link – than to tweet the affiliate link directly.
Write up a review of the product on your blog, give a balanced review, share why the product is relevant to your readers, tell them who would benefit most from it etc. And THEN tweet a link to the review.
Honestly, Twitter only allows 140 characters and to really do your affiliate product justice, you’ll need much more than that.
If you don’t have a website, now would be the perfect time to create one. There are free services out there, but don’t forget that you get what you pay for. In this case, you get what free offers.
I recommend (affiliate link to follow) Site Rubix, which is more than just a website. It comes with the best support (real people) on the web and you get two free sites with your account.
You see how I did that naturally and also recommended something I actually use? There is no need to really sell anything to anyone. Just be real, honest, and offer QUALITY.
Here’s how your tweet should look.
“This _____ is so fricken awesome, but they only have it in pink!”
You should have a link to a blog post you created and not your affiliate link.
Moderation is Important
In any affiliate marketing (and perhaps all types of marketing) those who you are speaking with will begin to ‘switch off’ and become blind to your promotions if you hit them too many times with marketing messages. We all will naturally do that.
This will especially be true on Twitter because the audience is highly skeptical to marketing messages and are attuned to transparency.
Not only can they opt out when your messages get too much – they often subscribe or follow you on the basis of what you’ve already written. If all you ever do is promote products (or yourself) you’re unlikely to grow a readership.
Listen to Your Followers
Just like in any other relationship, this is a two-way street. Hear what they have to say. Hear what they are talking about. Stay in tune with how people respond to different tweets, topics and stories.
This doesn’t just mean watching what people ‘reply’ to you but also means watching what happens to subscriber numbers after you tweet and also watching what people say about you without using your @username (you can set up an RSS feed on Twitter search to watch for keywords like your name or company name – very useful).
There you have it – my guide for Affiliate Marketing on Twitter. Through your experience, is there anything you’d want to add?
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Hey John!
Great post on using twitter for affiliate marketing, I personally use twitter to gain more traffic to my site too! And like you said communication is the key to gain customer trust, I often leave a message to my followers to tell them about my site and tell them to check it out or leave their comments/feedback. You also say about the relevance of the tweet, yes relevance is very important too if your tweet isn’t relevant to your content, people would not be interested.
Samuel
Thanks for sharing your thoughts Samuel! I actually created my first Twitter account back in 2014 when I started affiliate marketing. At the time, I had no clue as to how you could even sell anything from there, but I guess you can say I’ve learned a thing or two. I hope things are going well with you and your businesS!
Would really consider promoting my website on twitter,it does sound promising.I think I have to learn more about it before I start spending money on advertising. Thank you for your post.
Yeah you definitely want to learn more about any advertising platform you use. Whether you are going to do PPC with Google or use Twitter, you don’t want to go in headfirst without knowing what you’re doing.
The problem most people have when they try to take on advertising online is that they try do it without any knowledge and then you find them thinking that there is no way they are going to make money with ads. Learn how to do this and you can actually come out a winner.